Edit: Looks like they made some changes! With this new recent info drop from intrepid about the alpha 2 keys, my intitial thoughts are that I wish Intrepid would just include a few months game time & access to the beta should be automatic with these alpha 2 purchases. Would get way less hate. At the very least, why not throw in a few cosmetics? I don't think that would cost intrepid much & people would feel like they are getting something long-term from their purchase. The good thing is intrepid is being open about what these purchases get you (at least from the bit I saw), but idk it just doesn't feel like a good deal & it makes me question other things. This feels like a fundraiser, which is also ok I guess, but just call it a fundraiser lol If the company is experiencing financing issues (which I'm not saying they are), I would rather they be open about it. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Thanks for having me on Burns!
The $500 package is access to all testing phases, 1 year game time, 6 specific cosmetics, & I think $100-150 in store credits... offering a month or two of in-game time and few cosmetics would certainly not be the same @@kobald669 With that said many people paid the big prices for access to the testing so they wouldn't miss out. That is much cheaper now, so I understand the frustration.
@@chiefsosa8450 salty. Considering it's a bigger scope than any other MMO and intrepids first project it's pretty reasonable to anyone that critically thinks
@@mazmundie If I knew in 2021 that A2 would complete in 2026 I would NEVER have overlooked steven being a complete fg. This whole community consists of losers who're willing to pay $250 to be guinea pigs and a whole bunch of nursing home patients who are planning their retirement with aoc. I wish you all much luck circlejerking eachother for a game that does not exist. I do not want to be a part of any of this and I hope we never have to interact until after the release.
Yeah, thanks for the mention, Doc 😁 On the 64 class system: what I would is to be sure the secondary classes do more than just add "class flavour text", e.g.: (looking at my favourite WoW class, the Paladin, which is a Tank-Cleric in AoC) instead of just making a normal tank spell/action throw some of the same flashes as a cleric's spells, add a few of the cleric's spells themselves or maybe a compromise like a successful block healing me. That grappling hook could also inflict Life Leach (thinking of a shadow orientated cleric). Etc. To maybe "briefly" expand to other, less obvious, Tank secondary classes: - The mage's elemental empowerment could buff the Spellshield's defense and provide more cc than the tank normally has access to. - The summoner's summons, while not being main combatants (so as not to invalidate a Summoner primary), could maybe buff or even heal the Keeper. - The fighter could raise the Knight's DPS (significantly) by sacrificing some defense but still keep it higher than an equivalent Dreadnought's defense which in turn is higher than any other fighter+ class's. - The rogue could give the Nightshield stealth (PLEASE INTREPID) so they could sneak up and shield bash a mob to really amp up their threat gen, maybe also better perception for tracking adds or threat etc (some kind of flashing outline when losing hate?). - The ranger should definitely allow the Warden to, somehow, have more reach. Maybe pull with a non-equipped bow? Maybe main weapon a short bow and have a buckler type shield? - The bard's support characteristics could come from a hammer and shield used as "concussion instruments" 😋. Get a nice beat going and your defense goes up. Should only be usable by players who can keep to a beat (not me, I have so little Beat, I struggle to knock on doors). - and of course, the big daddy of tanks, the Guardian, should allow even only moderately capable wannabe tanks to at least stay alive and hold aggro to a passable degree with much better defense and aggro gen than any other tank. "Can't tank but want to learn? Roll a Guardian!". To expand to the other classes, I would use this formula: 0 (critical) Identify what makes each archetype unique, what gives them their identity. 1. The same/same classes (Weapon Master, Guardian, Hawkeye, etc) should each epitomize their archetype and its identity. 2. For the other 76 "hybrid" classes, each one should be less of it's primary than the 8 "pure" classes and must have gameplay changing mechanics from the secondary mechanics but not enough to actually be that secondary class. It might seem like an insurmountable task, but like we say in South Africa: "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." (Disclaimer: we don't actually eat elephants 😝)
Intrepid have already stated that they have set up monitoring that will enable them to know who is doing what when. This means, you need all sorts of people, players and testers as well as people who purely want to break stuff... good ol chaos monkeys.
Economist speaking here. Two things. First: they get revenue= quantity X price. Second thing: let's plot price (vertical axis) and dedication (flakines/quality) of a tester (horizontal axis). The higher the price the more dedicated and better tester you get. Lower the price = more common to have person that thinks he/her is buying a game, go in, go mad, comment and make videos that AoC is bad. Now let's talk about AoC specific situation here - hype for the game is huge! When people are hyped the quality/price relationship changes. You have more people that want to play the game instead of testing it properly, you have more flakey people. Price point from which you get dedicated enough people/good quality testers moves upwards toward higher price. I'm not saying they don't get money from this, it's obviously their motivation, but for long term success of the game they also need to filter people they allow to test. We don't have the data and maybe they don't want to go the route of shitting on their alpha 1 testers for being not dedicated enough and being useless in terms of tests.
I bought into Alpha 2 twice Played Alpha 1 with Narc and Grimmkill The server was down or patching so much that working my full time job left me with less then 40 hours of time to play in the month it was up. I'm not even planning to play Alpha 2 if they are only going to have the server up on weekends because I work Saturdays. Hope the game is good, but all the toxic fanboys have me looking for other games.
You made a Bespoke video months ago, where content creators gave their opinions about how much of AoC Intrepid has developed and when the launch might be. It would be interesting to ask again since, to me, it seems that they barely created anything, or not much beyond what was showcased.
I think people need to understand a few things: 1. Because Intrepid have used an Agile development methodology, Alpha testing for AoC is most likely going to be unlike any game Alpha testing that anyone has done before. They are not doing this to "Keep it fresh", it is part of the design and development strategy. 2. At the beginning of every 6 week cycle, the game and some of the things you are testing will be rougher than you expect, and by the end, the game will be more like a Beta test. A lot of the testers will be manic/depressive by the end. The first couple of week-ends are going to be very, very rough and doom and gloom may well be sky high. 3. There will be more wipes, data resets and fixes that disrupt people trying to "Play" the game rather than test. 4. There will be quite a lot more subjective and trial content than you would expect from a "normal" Alpha test. You will get an opportunity to contribute an opinion to design, more than a normal Alpha2. From a game perspective this category will be more like a normal Alpha 1 test. For example the unfinished archetypes will be still open to design changes. 5. Beta test will be a lot shorter. Intrepid might dispense with a Beta 1/Beta 2 test and just have one overall Beta test, or even pre-release. 6. Nothing has changed in my prediction of a 2025 release. This is where the Agile development methodology should start to pay off, and as I said Beta testing of the game, rather than the hardware, support/update processes, realm/player management, billing, etc. should be relatively trivial, having been pretty much tested in Alpha2. 7. I expect Alpha2 to be over in August/September 2025, and Beta to be virtually ready to go at that point. Your "Experts" may understand games, but they don't understand the IT business. It seems to me, that they still think that this is a "Waterfall Methodology", (in other words Design, Write, Test) game. Each "Sprint" that Stephen talks about, is a (Design, Write, Test) for that particular part of the game. And because this is not a Theme Park MMO, and far more process driven, it will go a lot faster at this point. I'm considering joining the test because of Number 4. I normally don't bother, but this opportunity to actually contribute to a game, has me interested, and I am thinking it is worth my time. I have also been out of the IT business for a while, so it won't feel as much like work.
Your 2025 prediction is basically insinuating that intrepid will have the game feature complete with no major bugs by Aug/Sep. With the ASSUMPTION that we even start phase 3 in May ( I promise you they aren’t hitting this date ) they will need some significant time to implement the rest of the game before beta. Alpha 2 is said by Steven to be FEATURE COMPLETE WHEN IT ENDS. That is not happening in 3 months. I think feature complete will come in late 2026 AT MINIMUM, probably 2027.
@@KanWest-mv6dr Yes, I think the game will be feature and content complete well before the end of 2025. Obviously things can go wrong, but generally speaking most of the commenters here are a degree of scale wrong. The Agile methodology aims to provide complete, working deliverables at the end of every Sprint. According to this principle, Agile projects should have a consistent pace for each iterative cycle or sprint within the project. It is considered a "Rapid Development Methodology". The code is "Functionally Complete" now, which means we are just changing the cosmetics and details of everything, inheriting and copy/pasting a lot of what has already been written. This is where you get the payoff from taking this approach. Intrepid's wage bill alone is 90M. There is no way they are going to have built up to that size, unless they think money is coming in soon. Steven is desperate to let everyone know that the game is closer, he keeps giving hints, but one of the Agile mantra's is no schedules and time estimates, because for each sprint, that particular feature is pretty raw at the start, you can run into design issues, which can be nasty. But at the Alpha2 stage, when you have the basic functionality working, things really start speeding up, because you are not (hopefully) going to run into any serious bugs, because everything new you write, is using a design/functionality based on something very similar that you already have working. I get that opinions on the Internet are fairly worthless, and you have no reason just to accept mine, but just do a bit of investigation and form your own opinion from facts, not feelings. I really urge you to understand that this is NOT a theme park MMO, and not a traditional Waterfall Development. That change in the work profile means comparing it to Baldur's Gate 3 (for example) is not remotely appropriate. ------ PS: Steven has come out and said he expects Alpha2 phase 3 to be 12 months, so I underestimated by 6 months, but my new estimate is first half 2026.
Thank you for the educated analysis. While not very familiar with professional development, my interests have led me to investigate it a bit and I've suspected a lot of what you're saying. Ever hopeful that it works out like this, as someone who isn't in the Alpha 2 (yet), I implore you to please join the Alpha 2 and contribute to AoC with the knowledge and expertise that not many can offer. Please.
alpha 2 being all over twitch and youtube for 1/2 will kill all hype for it. Most people don't really want to understand what a real alpha is and if that is all they see for 1/2 years "thats what the game is? cya" and when it launches "ho its AoC again, saw it, pass"
The time A2 stays open is a business decision as well. It is live service and they have to pay for that. The current cost affords about a year (assuming $15/month). If it drags out past 1.5 to 2 years they are going to have to rope in more people or watch their live service A2 spin money down the drain.
Well, the main issue with Paid A2 Keys, is gonna be the Price Tag, because 100+$, been mostly used by Companies with "current ubisoft" level reputation, and that fact alone would throw some big shade on a project -- there's already an Asmongold vid talking about the fact, and its not exactly favorable one
Hot take, alpha shouldn't be more than 8 months to a year, especially with this open development. Any more than that is just scope screep. There's a point of diminishing returns during project development and AoC is already pushing it. Source, I'm a project manager IRL.
*Ashes was fully funded from Day 1 - They put A2 keys back up because they finished their Dynamic Server Meshing/Gridding. Now they can handle many more people.*
Fully founded yes. But now they are bringing in money to recoup the costs. That is something that's very popular in today's gaming market but we have to remember that it's extremely shady and would not fly 20 years ago. Times change I agree but they don't change this quickly on their own. We've been conditioned to accept this kind of sleazy business practice by over 15 years of bad practice.
@@RitchieSH What should he be saying? We don't have enough money, we're in dire straights, panic? Of course they're going to keep a cheerful face, no matter what the real condition of the project is. Otherwise the money stops flowing.
Edit: Looks like they made some changes!
With this new recent info drop from intrepid about the alpha 2 keys, my intitial thoughts are that I wish Intrepid would just include a few months game time & access to the beta should be automatic with these alpha 2 purchases. Would get way less hate. At the very least, why not throw in a few cosmetics? I don't think that would cost intrepid much & people would feel like they are getting something long-term from their purchase. The good thing is intrepid is being open about what these purchases get you (at least from the bit I saw), but idk it just doesn't feel like a good deal & it makes me question other things. This feels like a fundraiser, which is also ok I guess, but just call it a fundraiser lol If the company is experiencing financing issues (which I'm not saying they are), I would rather they be open about it. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Thanks for having me on Burns!
You're right on man!
"why not throw in a few cosmetics?" they still need a difference to the preorder packs tehy sold before
They are including beta access for the a2 phase keys. They changed it afterwards
Hmm, why does that sound like the packs that were on sale for years? Oh wait...
The $500 package is access to all testing phases, 1 year game time, 6 specific cosmetics, & I think $100-150 in store credits... offering a month or two of in-game time and few cosmetics would certainly not be the same @@kobald669 With that said many people paid the big prices for access to the testing so they wouldn't miss out. That is much cheaper now, so I understand the frustration.
Not sure if you've seen but Steven did a Reddit post a few hours ago saying they plan for phase 3 to be 1 year and the key now gives beta
Im considering purchasing a key myself, but Im going tow ait a bit, and if they "sell out" then ah well no biggie, but that is such a benefit!
@auesip I feel as soon as people watch streams they will buy buy biy
So this game will be in alpha until 2026, what a fucking joke.
@@chiefsosa8450 salty. Considering it's a bigger scope than any other MMO and intrepids first project it's pretty reasonable to anyone that critically thinks
@@mazmundie If I knew in 2021 that A2 would complete in 2026 I would NEVER have overlooked steven being a complete fg. This whole community consists of losers who're willing to pay $250 to be guinea pigs and a whole bunch of nursing home patients who are planning their retirement with aoc. I wish you all much luck circlejerking eachother for a game that does not exist. I do not want to be a part of any of this and I hope we never have to interact until after the release.
Crazy how a beard can make a guy go from 20 to mid 30s.
He will be in his mid 30s when this game finally releases ;)
Yeah, thanks for the mention, Doc 😁
On the 64 class system: what I would is to be sure the secondary classes do more than just add "class flavour text", e.g.: (looking at my favourite WoW class, the Paladin, which is a Tank-Cleric in AoC) instead of just making a normal tank spell/action throw some of the same flashes as a cleric's spells, add a few of the cleric's spells themselves or maybe a compromise like a successful block healing me. That grappling hook could also inflict Life Leach (thinking of a shadow orientated cleric). Etc.
To maybe "briefly" expand to other, less obvious, Tank secondary classes:
- The mage's elemental empowerment could buff the Spellshield's defense and provide more cc than the tank normally has access to.
- The summoner's summons, while not being main combatants (so as not to invalidate a Summoner primary), could maybe buff or even heal the Keeper.
- The fighter could raise the Knight's DPS (significantly) by sacrificing some defense but still keep it higher than an equivalent Dreadnought's defense which in turn is higher than any other fighter+ class's.
- The rogue could give the Nightshield stealth (PLEASE INTREPID) so they could sneak up and shield bash a mob to really amp up their threat gen, maybe also better perception for tracking adds or threat etc (some kind of flashing outline when losing hate?).
- The ranger should definitely allow the Warden to, somehow, have more reach. Maybe pull with a non-equipped bow? Maybe main weapon a short bow and have a buckler type shield?
- The bard's support characteristics could come from a hammer and shield used as "concussion instruments" 😋. Get a nice beat going and your defense goes up. Should only be usable by players who can keep to a beat (not me, I have so little Beat, I struggle to knock on doors).
- and of course, the big daddy of tanks, the Guardian, should allow even only moderately capable wannabe tanks to at least stay alive and hold aggro to a passable degree with much better defense and aggro gen than any other tank. "Can't tank but want to learn? Roll a Guardian!".
To expand to the other classes, I would use this formula:
0 (critical) Identify what makes each archetype unique, what gives them their identity.
1. The same/same classes (Weapon Master, Guardian, Hawkeye, etc) should each epitomize their archetype and its identity.
2. For the other 76 "hybrid" classes, each one should be less of it's primary than the 8 "pure" classes and must have gameplay changing mechanics from the secondary mechanics but not enough to actually be that secondary class.
It might seem like an insurmountable task, but like we say in South Africa: "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." (Disclaimer: we don't actually eat elephants 😝)
Apologies for the Wall of Text, obviously this is one of the subjects I'm very interested in exploring.
This was an awesome video dude. And a great length. Loved it.
Love this one, digestible information is the key to success! See you ingame Oct 25th Brother!
Bought Voyager in 2020. Wife just purchased Phase I Alpha 2 when it became available.
Intrepid have already stated that they have set up monitoring that will enable them to know who is doing what when.
This means, you need all sorts of people, players and testers as well as people who purely want to break stuff... good ol chaos monkeys.
Economist speaking here. Two things.
First: they get revenue= quantity X price.
Second thing: let's plot price (vertical axis) and dedication (flakines/quality) of a tester (horizontal axis). The higher the price the more dedicated and better tester you get. Lower the price = more common to have person that thinks he/her is buying a game, go in, go mad, comment and make videos that AoC is bad.
Now let's talk about AoC specific situation here - hype for the game is huge! When people are hyped the quality/price relationship changes. You have more people that want to play the game instead of testing it properly, you have more flakey people. Price point from which you get dedicated enough people/good quality testers moves upwards toward higher price.
I'm not saying they don't get money from this, it's obviously their motivation, but for long term success of the game they also need to filter people they allow to test. We don't have the data and maybe they don't want to go the route of shitting on their alpha 1 testers for being not dedicated enough and being useless in terms of tests.
Wish I could reply here with my favourite meme pic: Obelix, a tad drunk, slamming the table between him and Asterix and shouting "Zegactly!"
Great vid, should get a pinned message with the new data adding embers and 1 month and beta access to the keys
Burns dropping videos before my grandma out of bed
I bought into Alpha 2 twice
Played Alpha 1 with Narc and Grimmkill
The server was down or patching so much that working my full time job left me with less then 40 hours of time to play in the month it was up.
I'm not even planning to play Alpha 2 if they are only going to have the server up on weekends because I work Saturdays.
Hope the game is good, but all the toxic fanboys have me looking for other games.
Only phase 1 is weekends only, will last 2 month.
I’m here for the beard comments.
I spent like $500 on Star Citizen and I played like 10 hours of it even though I can play it 24/7 atm.
You made a Bespoke video months ago, where content creators gave their opinions about how much of AoC Intrepid has developed and when the launch might be. It would be interesting to ask again since, to me, it seems that they barely created anything, or not much beyond what was showcased.
Not everything they created will be in phase 1.
Wow the rare upgrade from losing the beard
Everyone had great points, but Bob really stole the show.
Thank you sir
I think people need to understand a few things:
1. Because Intrepid have used an Agile development methodology, Alpha testing for AoC is most likely going to be unlike any game Alpha testing that anyone has done before. They are not doing this to "Keep it fresh", it is part of the design and development strategy.
2. At the beginning of every 6 week cycle, the game and some of the things you are testing will be rougher than you expect, and by the end, the game will be more like a Beta test. A lot of the testers will be manic/depressive by the end. The first couple of week-ends are going to be very, very rough and doom and gloom may well be sky high.
3. There will be more wipes, data resets and fixes that disrupt people trying to "Play" the game rather than test.
4. There will be quite a lot more subjective and trial content than you would expect from a "normal" Alpha test. You will get an opportunity to contribute an opinion to design, more than a normal Alpha2. From a game perspective this category will be more like a normal Alpha 1 test. For example the unfinished archetypes will be still open to design changes.
5. Beta test will be a lot shorter. Intrepid might dispense with a Beta 1/Beta 2 test and just have one overall Beta test, or even pre-release.
6. Nothing has changed in my prediction of a 2025 release. This is where the Agile development methodology should start to pay off, and as I said Beta testing of the game, rather than the hardware, support/update processes, realm/player management, billing, etc. should be relatively trivial, having been pretty much tested in Alpha2.
7. I expect Alpha2 to be over in August/September 2025, and Beta to be virtually ready to go at that point. Your "Experts" may understand games, but they don't understand the IT business. It seems to me, that they still think that this is a "Waterfall Methodology", (in other words Design, Write, Test) game. Each "Sprint" that Stephen talks about, is a (Design, Write, Test) for that particular part of the game. And because this is not a Theme Park MMO, and far more process driven, it will go a lot faster at this point.
I'm considering joining the test because of Number 4. I normally don't bother, but this opportunity to actually contribute to a game, has me interested, and I am thinking it is worth my time. I have also been out of the IT business for a while, so it won't feel as much like work.
Your 2025 prediction is basically insinuating that intrepid will have the game feature complete with no major bugs by Aug/Sep.
With the ASSUMPTION that we even start phase 3 in May ( I promise you they aren’t hitting this date ) they will need some significant time to implement the rest of the game before beta. Alpha 2 is said by Steven to be FEATURE COMPLETE WHEN IT ENDS. That is not happening in 3 months. I think feature complete will come in late 2026 AT MINIMUM, probably 2027.
@@KanWest-mv6dr Yes, I think the game will be feature and content complete well before the end of 2025. Obviously things can go wrong, but generally speaking most of the commenters here are a degree of scale wrong. The Agile methodology aims to provide complete, working deliverables at the end of every Sprint. According to this principle, Agile projects should have a consistent pace for each iterative cycle or sprint within the project. It is considered a "Rapid Development Methodology".
The code is "Functionally Complete" now, which means we are just changing the cosmetics and details of everything, inheriting and copy/pasting a lot of what has already been written. This is where you get the payoff from taking this approach. Intrepid's wage bill alone is 90M. There is no way they are going to have built up to that size, unless they think money is coming in soon.
Steven is desperate to let everyone know that the game is closer, he keeps giving hints, but one of the Agile mantra's is no schedules and time estimates, because for each sprint, that particular feature is pretty raw at the start, you can run into design issues, which can be nasty. But at the Alpha2 stage, when you have the basic functionality working, things really start speeding up, because you are not (hopefully) going to run into any serious bugs, because everything new you write, is using a design/functionality based on something very similar that you already have working.
I get that opinions on the Internet are fairly worthless, and you have no reason just to accept mine, but just do a bit of investigation and form your own opinion from facts, not feelings. I really urge you to understand that this is NOT a theme park MMO, and not a traditional Waterfall Development. That change in the work profile means comparing it to Baldur's Gate 3 (for example) is not remotely appropriate.
------
PS: Steven has come out and said he expects Alpha2 phase 3 to be 12 months, so I underestimated by 6 months, but my new estimate is first half 2026.
They said already that phase 3 will last at least one year, so you are already proven wrong.
@@micbln8967 I already wrote that myself.
But I'm not as far out as the people who said it was going to last 3 years.
Thank you for the educated analysis. While not very familiar with professional development, my interests have led me to investigate it a bit and I've suspected a lot of what you're saying. Ever hopeful that it works out like this, as someone who isn't in the Alpha 2 (yet), I implore you to please join the Alpha 2 and contribute to AoC with the knowledge and expertise that not many can offer. Please.
Roar with the fax
I bought the pack I did purely for the lifetime sub, the rest of it to me is just a bonus. But that is just me I guess.
sweet!
Bespoke = poggies.
alpha 2 being all over twitch and youtube for 1/2 will kill all hype for it. Most people don't really want to understand what a real alpha is and if that is all they see for 1/2 years "thats what the game is? cya" and when it launches "ho its AoC again, saw it, pass"
The time A2 stays open is a business decision as well. It is live service and they have to pay for that. The current cost affords about a year (assuming $15/month). If it drags out past 1.5 to 2 years they are going to have to rope in more people or watch their live service A2 spin money down the drain.
A 32 minute Copium Clinic Video? *grabs popcorn*
Lol even with ashes limited current content its miles ahead of star citizen..
Unless you're a content creator you shouldn't be giving money to be a free tester. It's your money though...
Well, the main issue with Paid A2 Keys, is gonna be the Price Tag, because 100+$, been mostly used by Companies with "current ubisoft" level reputation, and that fact alone would throw some big shade on a project -- there's already an Asmongold vid talking about the fact, and its not exactly favorable one
Hot take, alpha shouldn't be more than 8 months to a year, especially with this open development. Any more than that is just scope screep. There's a point of diminishing returns during project development and AoC is already pushing it. Source, I'm a project manager IRL.
*Ashes was fully funded from Day 1 - They put A2 keys back up because they finished their Dynamic Server Meshing/Gridding. Now they can handle many more people.*
cope
Fully founded yes. But now they are bringing in money to recoup the costs. That is something that's very popular in today's gaming market but we have to remember that it's extremely shady and would not fly 20 years ago. Times change I agree but they don't change this quickly on their own. We've been conditioned to accept this kind of sleazy business practice by over 15 years of bad practice.
Steven even posted last night the key sales are to help pay for servers. That’s clearly not fully funded friend
@@RitchieSH What should he be saying? We don't have enough money, we're in dire straights, panic? Of course they're going to keep a cheerful face, no matter what the real condition of the project is. Otherwise the money stops flowing.
I'm unsubscribing since you shaved your beard. Unacceptable.
I’m done with the game bc it’s taking way too long. It has another 5-10 years
So just come back In 5 years?
Way too long? Look at Throne & Liberty - was 12 years in devopment. LOTRO 9 years..